In this special episode Sascha talks with Cheryl Delany of Bit By Bit Counseling about control, perfectionism, chaos and letting go. They delve into the particular trust fall experiences of non-standard brain chemistry and parenting and the rewards of allowing things to move in uncharted, un-called-for ways.…

In part two of this series Sascha and I talk about the concept of fledging more generally: what happens when we're tossed from our nest into inhospitable landscapes? Has the goal always been to send our young ones off to better worlds? What happens when we stayed close and built something complex nearby each other? We also think about the many ways…

The two episodes in this series are a recording of a long conversation Sascha and I had whilst sitting in a mountain house in Georgia. Over coffee and tiny supermarket donuts we talked for (literal) hours about our maternal lines: where our mothers' people came from, the gifts and challenges of their particular nests, how they sent their young ones…

In this episode Sascha and I respond to some frequently asked (and a few unasked) questions about The Grief House. The sound quality is a little off in this episode. You might ask Q: Laura, did you chose to record this sitting cross legged in an armchair with your microphone balanced on a pile of books balanced on your lap? And I would have to answ…

In this episode, Sascha, Jana DeCristofaro and I open a discussion with our death companions about how we might spend our final incarnate moments together. Being variously acquainted with/inclined toward the idea of death companions that are born alongside us and accompany through mortality teaching and reteaching us ways we might fall into their a…

In this episode Sascha and I respond to the essay, The Body Of My Mother by Perdita Finn: Tell me about your mother’s body. Her hands and her feet, her belly and her breasts. Tell me about her skin and her hair and the color of her eyes. Tell me about her smell—her breath, her underarms, the scent of her when she leaned in close. In the beginning I…

In this very special episode Sascha, Jana and I introduce ourselves and each other to our disappointment creatures. They are a rag-tag crew, but (in my opinion) overall pretty great. I would send them on any number of missions together. We talk about the utility of disappointment, it's reasons for being, what kinds of disappointment was served up a…

In this special episode Sascha, Jana DeCristopharo of the Dougy Center and I search out and approach our wild grief creatures. Some of them are lava monsters, some are trapped behind sliding doors. They are vaporous, shocked, frozen and misunderstood. They grieve death, separation, abandonment and things unknown. They are adrift and anchored and sw…

In this episode Sasha and I tell our love stories with the universe. When she first caught our eye, our courtship, the rough parts, the different ways we made up and how we feel about each other now. It's a lot like the movie when Harry me Sally but less funny and no scenes in diners. We'd love you to send us clips from your love stories with the U…

In this episode (which I accidentally posted unedited the other day, and 14 of you listened to, likely with a feeling of confusion, before Sascha realized what I'd done and fixed it) Sascha and I say I love you to each other, again and again. It makes me feel squirmy joyful and fed and so so so so lucky. It's a brave experiment - asking someone you…

In this episode Sascha and I talk about our old strategies for self-protection when faced with the threat of uncharted love. We allow that they may be doing us more harm than good but we'll probably stick with them anyway. Featuring: fathers, fire escapes, dreams, Greek Salad, some murder, tenacity, ice castles, and a mention of the Rat Stove (whic…

In this episode of the podcast Sascha and I consider our fear of forever. Given our upbringing in a world that rarely acknowledges or even perceives things' natural edges, is it possible to feel into the cadence of experiences as they unfold? If we don't schedule the unfolding of our experiences, will they naturally evolve into new things? Or stall…

Sascha talks with her husband Peter about the effect of unprocessed and intergenerational grief - how and where it hangs around. They talk about how Peter went about even noticing it and what it is to reconcile a painful past of genocide and suicide, especially when it lives in our bodies and in the shadows.…

At the Grief House we're interested in building a rich, loamy soil in which our lost and fallen bits can be met as nourishment, broken down and taken in and made available, in a new form, to support new growth. We've decided to take this metaphor and turn it into matter. And then back to metaphor and on and on. Cycles and cycles - just like everyth…

In this episode Sascha and I try to see the unseeable wind of grief, fail, and instead call out the names of all the swirling solid grief bodies we see as they whip past in the gust. Alphabetically. For a grief activity - so fun. Take a listen, won't you? NOTE: Extra points and gratitude for anyone who illustrated any portion of this, the start to …

In this episode Sascha and I attempt to address grief head on. We do our best to gaze right at the huge swirling everything of her, and more or less fail. We do manage to talk about pooping in the woods, burying my mother, FedEx-ed cremains and how it feels to want help that isn't readily for sale. In the end we realize our work is to be afraid, sm…

In this episode Sascha and I talked about our dread vessels; the space inside our hearts and minds that is reserved for dread and fear. We wondered about the nature of the vessel and if it can be shrunk. We thought of strategies by which we might understand it more, how things come pouring in, how they pour out, what things never leave, what could …

What happens when the worst thing arrives? What makes the worst thing the worst? How does it stay the worst? What happens if it doesn't? What breaks and what doesn't when the worst thing shows up at the door? What takes the place of the worst thing when the worst thing is past? In this episode Sascha and I compare notes about worst things we have o…

In this special episode two of my favorite Portland women, Jenny Serna and Moe Bowstern, talk about their magic. We constructed this episode in a universe's grab-bag/Stir The Pot sort of way - I made a list of questions, Moe and Jenny took turns choosing numbers and we trusted the swirling everything to turn up what wanted considering. It was perfe…

In this special episode Sascha talks with our friend Rachel the space where magic meets intensive care. Rachel is a ICU nurse and a student of paganism and traditional Earth Magic from the British Isles. She and Sascha talk about the intersection of these two aspects of her life and work, how one might protect magic while embracing modern medicine …

In this episode, Sascha and I talk about Trust and Risk - by which, I think, we mean love; because there's no way to untangle them. Love is risky. It's trustworthy in a devastating, heartbreaking, generous, way that makes no sense at all and is the only thing that makes any sense. We discuss tigers, rabbits, shadow girls, flaming garbage, safety an…

In this episode about risk Sascha and I explore the varied ways we gage the danger of any given situation. We talk about mothers, swings, logs in the woods. We make note of the ways our sure and imminent death plays into our calculations and how grateful we are for the hard, brave work past versions of ourselves have done in service of our current …

This month on the podcast we're feeling deeply into numbness. In this our second episode we explore strategies for thawing - should the desire for sensation arise. We offer hot cocoa, secret audio messages, moaning and proximity to lakes as methods to more toward more feeling. We also spend a lot of time talking about how thawed isn't better and fr…

In this feelings episode Sascha and I discuss numbness. We decide it is useful and problematic, a path to deeper feeling and a worrisome defensive move. We ponder surgical numbness, numbness brought on by waterfalls, and times when numbness leads to far too many vacuum cleaners. we hope you will enjoy our romp through numbness.…

In this special episode my best friend Emmy Garr and I discuss everything in the bowl; memories from our friendship, our trip to the casino, gross things we love, the time I made her room mate very mad and more. We offer a glimpse into friendship that can't possibly be ranked below any other kind of love. Plus you get to heat Emmy's voice - which i…

Q: What's happening in that picture with all the plaid? A: Sascha and I are dancing the Salty Dog at our high school pep rally. Q: But, why? A: Because we started a bowling club. Q: But...why? A: It depends on who you ask. More questions? Listen to this bonus episode! Still more? Become a patron and we'll answer any question you dream up. https://w…

In this episode Sascha and I discuss the trouble of just and more than friends. We offer hues that fall outside the spectrum as we were raised to understand it, try to see each other shake in love we can't make into easy labels and feel grateful for our perfect, wonderful only/more than friendship.By Sascha Demerjian & Laura Green

In this episode Sascha and hop into and out of control, peer around both places and report our findings. We discuss the sneaky forcefulness of the prey faced, our parallel 3rd grade power moves, dog packs and our friendship. We hope you'll come climb under and above and all around control with us.By Sascha Demerjian & Laura Green

In this recent Portals episode, Sascha talks with Tina Tau, a dreamworker and Portland Grief House board member. They discuss deep listening to dreams, looking for the message you do not already know, and do some dream processing together. Tina has recently written a book called Ask for Horses: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life, and she loves to listen…

In this episode Sascha and I discuss our brave ventures out into the land of disappointment. We share tales of heroism from encounters with needs we cannot meet and valor from wanting things that might not want us back. We discuss my father, Sascha's mother and how they might be the reasons we are broken or might be the exact medicine our souls nee…

In this special episode I talk with my good friend and Portland Grief House-mate Hannah Hillebrand about our creature-y-ness. We talk about comfort and need, the price of delayed mortality, the joy of giving things up, and how we might integrate our wildness with modernity. We come up with plans to lean our animal bodies further and further away fr…

In this episode Sasha and I interview each other's bodies. We ask about how they feel being in relationships with our brains and personalities, consider the good old days of swingsets and makebelieve, and hope for futures where we live together more honestly, tenderly and completely.By Sascha Demerjian & Laura Green

In this episode Sascha and I discuss the patterns that exists within the mysterious, swirling everything, how we orient towards them, what we risk in that turning and why we turn despite the risk. We review Atlanta, Hypochondria, partnership and gossip. We are, as always, grateful for each other and for all of you.…

In this episode Sascha and I decide to sit shame down and ask her if there's anything she needs that we can offer. While not committing to provide full board and lodging, we extend the offer of a warm bowl of soup on a cold night. We discuss abandoned accents, the mystery of asparagus, the shock of 9th graders talking about college plans for fun an…

In this episode Sascha and I talk about shame. We agree that it feels terrible, contemplate the devastating effects of its deployment, ponder its kinship with creeping infestations and howling caves and wonder about how it can be transformed. After aspiring never to ride in trucks with shame we spend some talking about how great it feels when it li…

In this episode which was meant to be about the joy that comes with accepting the present moment as it is, Sascha and I explore the hysterical misery of present moments that actually suck quite a lot. We talk about how it feels to see the right-ness of something while also wishing it would be completely different. We ponder possible culprits for do…

In this episode I talk with Moe Bowstern about her project which asks the question: What does it mean to do community magic in a bar? We discuss the magic of asking questions a whole room of people answer from their unique place of expertise and whether a person needs special shoes to come play along (you don't). We explore the difference between i…

In this episode Sascha and I talk about how panicked my body is about my mother's body dying. We talk about how to survive in a culture that doesn't have a plan for how to help our bodies integrate this kind of loss. We explore things that might help and what it will be like if nothing really helps. We talk about other bodies that have left us and …

In this episode Sascha and I talk about how the longest, soundest stays are sometimes born from many departures. We discuss the nature of death and rebirth in every phase of evolution and how building relationships that move with that cycle might offer a deep attachment we both want.By Sascha Demerjian & Laura Green

This month Sascha and I are talking about staying. We discuss how staying with the hurt bits and the fears is not passive; it's muscular. It burns calories. We notice how it feels, to us, like an endeavor for which a person requires a support crew - to wave and shout encouragement and offer snacks and flashlights when the sun goes down. It also doe…

In this episode Sascha and I talk with each other about how it felt to talk with our sisters about how it feels to trust our parents. We discuss rocks and rivers, how it might change a sentient river to watch swimmers play in or flee it, and our hope of some day becoming sentient rivers at peace with the elements that made us. We talk about differe…

In our second sister episode, Sascha talks with her sister, Isadora, about trusting their mother, Teresa. Sascha and Izzy discuss the complexity of trusting someone who lived in a reality they couldn't quite fathom, how that effected their ability to trust their own perception of reality and how it shaped their ability to trust themselves and each …

In this bilingual episode about family, I talk with my sister about if and how it could be possible to trust our father, Gerardo. We talk about how it feels to be people who have been set aside, the particular pain of being let-go-able. We explore how gratitude and sadness live together in our bodies, and wonder if there's a way to trust our father…

In this episode about feelings Sascha and I call our wants over. We watch them move and tell each other what we see. Then we hand our want creatures to our friend (and Portals editor) Sid and he makes music they can dance to. I wasn't at all sure how this experiment would turn out but in the end what came is exactly what I wanted.…

In this episode about feelings Sascha and I discuss what it's like to want. We consider categories of want, wonder about the difference between wanting things for ourselves and wanting things for our beloveds and explore what lessons the tea cup carnival ride has to teach us about want. We consider want in the parent-child relationship where it qui…

In this episode Sascha and I talk about how it feels to hold people in our hearts, thoughts and consciousness. We consider what it's like to be born, again and again, into vessels that then wander off holding you however they see fit. What it's like to carry someone who doesn't know you have them. What it's like to carry someone who may or may not …

In this episode Sascha and I discuss the many iterations of our birth. We consider what it means to be born into a communal reality that's made from individual realities that overlap like bubbles in foam, how it's possible to be born into someone's world years and years before they're born into yours, and what happens when you begin to suspect birt…

In this episode Sascha and I contemplate how Gods soak through the fabric of reality. We wonder how to best maintain open, nourished portals - how to live like everything might be a doorway to divinity. This is another of our special, scored episodes. Our friend Parsa makes sound doors through which our gods come dancing. It's quite magical and com…

This month on Portals we discuss fucking up. We talk about what it's like to make mistakes, hurt people and stay close, and what it's like when we can't stay close. We discuss the merits of a fallible God - how much we might learn from a deity who messes up and is still worthy of trusting with the care and tending of our souls.…

In this episode about magic (which we recorded in-person during Sascha's visit to Portland), our friend Parsa, who makes music for our feeling creatures, joins us with his voice! Sascha and Parsa agree to play a game where we take turns overhearing each other talk about our magic. It's like cloud gazing but the clouds make pictures of our mysteries…